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Color analysis Theory

Four Season Color Analysis and the Munsell System

Lora Alexander is a color analyst who specializes in make-up artistry. She blogs about color at Pretty Your World. Here she shares her story on using Munsell to get back to basics and learn a more robust system for analyzing color.

Going Back to the Basics of Color Analysis

As soon as I read Carole Jackson’s book “Color Me Beautiful” back in
High School I was hooked. I became obsessed with analyzing everyone’s
“season”, whether in person or on TV. It would be quite a few years
before I turned my passion into a successful website. But I continued to
color analyze anyone and everyone in the meantime.
The 4 season system of the book worked for me. My red hair, pale
ivory skin and green eyes put me perfectly into the “Autumn” category. I
thought it was a perfect system. It did indeed work for some; but not
everyone. After studying color theory more, it was found that the system was indeed using two of the 3 characteristics that Albert Munsell talked about: Hue and Value. But something was missing and that was Chroma.
Once this element was put into the equation, the 4 seasons expanded
into 12. And a newly advanced color analysis system was created. This
was the system I was trained on years ago and was using until about a
year ago.

Advancing a Color System with Munsell

The
system worked for most, but there were still some people who didn’t fit
neatly into the 12 seasons. For example, there were some Winters who
clearly had the depth and other characteristics of a Winter (like the
color black looking great on them, for example) but the overall clarity
and high contrast of the typical Winter seemed too sharp and
unflattering. Their chroma was muted, not clear. But a muted Winter? It
didn’t make sense.
This is where someone went back to the basics and studied Munsell’s
system even further and created an even more advanced color system based
on his principles, called the 4×4 Color System®. That someone was
Certified Image Professional Consultant Ferial Youakim, AICI CIP.
Ferial found that there were some gray areas in the 12-season system.
Literally! What was missing was the element of gray.
Most people are probably familiar with the terms tints, tones and
shades, perhaps first hearing about them in art class. A tint is a color
that has white added to it. A tone is a color that has gray added to
it. And a shade is a color that has black added to it.

What Ferial discovered was that the 12-season system was missing this Tone element.
Note: Ferial’s discovery didn’t change or alter the existing 12
seasons, other than help understand it better. It did however add one
more season to each of the four main seasons.
Overall, in the new system, there are still the main four seasons of
Winter, Summer, Spring and Autumn, but each will have four
sub-categories that will contain:

The purest and most saturated colors for that main season (pure colors)

The lightest colors for the main season (tints)

The most muted colors of the main season; also middle-intensity level (tones)

The deepest colors of the main season (shades)

To create a universal language everyone can understand, she has
labeled the following seasons to match its characteristic. For example,
each season will either be a
PURE, TINTED, TONED or SHADED SEASON.
The image below shows 4 Winters and how different characteristics might show up in a person.

Note that the Toned Winter (3rd photo) is a new season
that 4×4 Color System identified, the type of person I described above:
someone having the depth of a Winter but who’s chroma is more muted than
clear.
And here’s some celebrity Winters who illustrate the Pure, Tinted,
Toned and Shaded concept: Megan Fox, Alison Brie, Katie Holmes and Kim
Kardashian, respectively.

The differences can be very subtle. But to the person who is trying
to find their absolute perfect look, knowing their correct season is
like when you fine tune an image with binoculars; it might look ok until
you adjust things just so and everything is in beautiful focus.
I had the pleasure of training with Ferial awhile back and after
having studied the 4×4 system, I now look at person as either pure,
tinted, toned or shaded. Despite being a highly advanced system, it
actually simplifies Color Analysis and anything that simplifies my job
is always a great thing. ~